Along the Frontier:

Musings and Reflections

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Stegner Country

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a celebration of Wallace Stegner’s literary and conservation legacy, held in Santa Fe (where he died nearly twenty years earlier). I had the honor of meeting Stegner in 1991 and have always considered him to be one of my Heroes, along with Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry. Not only were his words inspirational, he lived an honorable life. For a long time, I wanted to be Wallace Stegner.

However, I came away from the celebration with mixed feelings. That’s not a criticism of Stegner, who I still consider to be a great man and a fine writer. It’s just that his vision of the American West, as evidenced by the readings selected that evening, feels so “mid-century” now. By that I mean – to be honest – rather out-of-touch. That’s not Stegner’s fault of course, no more than it is John Muir’s fault for being so “turn-of-the-century” or Thoreau for being so “mid-century” himself. We are products of our times, after all.

However, I suspect my opinion was a minority one. For many who attended the packed celebration, Stegner’s words and vision are still spot-on. The evening ended, for example, with actor Wes Studi reading the entirety of Stegner’s famous ‘Wilderness Letter’ which eloquently makes a case for the protection of wild country. It was a moving performance of a great piece of literature with a consequential message, heartily and justly greeted by a loud round of applause by the audience. It was wonderful – except for one little detail.

The letter was written in 1960.

It isn’t relevant anymore. It’s 2012, and the world is facing challenges that pale the question of wilderness protection into near obscurity. I know this opinion makes me an outlier in the modern conservation movement, and if I had said something to this effect out loud at the celebration I would have likely been shouted down. I’m not anti-wilderness – in fact, in the mid-1990s I lobbied hard for new wilderness areas in Utah as part of my Sierra Club work. I’ve been a wilderness supporter for decades. But today we have bigger fish to fry.

Much bigger.

Climate change, for one thing, is busily rearranging all our preconceptions about ‘protection’ and ‘preservation.’ Nothing is safe anymore from the long arm of human influence. Wilderness areas may still be ‘untrammeled’ in the classic sense – by feet or wheels – but they certainly are not untrammeled by carbon dioxide or drought. Their ‘pristineness’ – a major part of their appeal to advocates – was always largely a myth that can now be discarded altogether.

Nothing on the planet is pristine any more.

But there’s a bigger issue: how are we going to provide for nine billion people on the planet without destroying what’s left of nature? That’s the Crisis. Scroll forward fifty years and ask: what will be on people’s minds? Not wilderness. My guess is that it will be the Five Fs: food, fodder, fuel, fiber, and fresh water (a friend of mine throws in a sixth: firearms). That includes the American West, where already the question of adequate supplies of water is beginning to loom large. The other four (or five) Fs may follow quickly – it depends a lot on what we do between now and then.

Instead, I wish they had read from Stegner’s essay Living Dry at the celebration. Here’s his prescient warning: “Aridity, more than anything else, gives the western landscape its character. It is aridity that gives the air its special dry clarity; aridity that puts brilliance in the light and polishes and enlarges the stars; aridity that leads the grasses to evolve as bunches rather than turf…aridity still calls the tune, directs our tinkering, prevents the healing of our mistakes; and vast unwatered reaches still emphasize the contrast between the desert and the sown.”

According to scientists, the Southwest is destined to become even more arid over the next fifty years, thanks to global warming, making Stegner’s words even more prophetic.

He continues: “The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process. And the western landscape that it has taken us a century and three quarters to learn about, and partially adapt our farming, our social institutions, our laws, and our aesthetic perceptions to, has now become our most valuable natural resource, as subject to raid and ruin as the more concrete resources that have suffered from our rapacity.”

This is timeless part of Stegner’s work – his clear-eyed view of our limitations. This was the message we needed to hear, but didn’t. He’s still spot-on about the West being an unending process, not something frozen in time or place.

And I’m convinced it’s a process that is about to speed up, as I’ll discuss.

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[I am redirecting this biweekly column to what is becoming the most pressing issue of our age: how to provide for nine billion people without destroying what is left of Nature]

The Main Event

4/15/12 - According to the United Nations, there will be nine billion people on the planet by 2050, which raises a serious question: how are we going to feed them without destroying what’s left of the natural world, especially under the stress of climate change?

Australian farmer Colin Seis has an answer: intensify food production by managing land in nature’s image.

That might sound like a mouthful, but consider the heart of this issue: if humans can’t find enough food, fuel, fiber, and fresh water to sustain themselves, they’ll raid the environment to secure them, pushing all other values that we place on nature, such as wilderness and endangered species protection, down the priority list. Perhaps way down.

It’s not about poor people and starvation either. The food well-fed Americans eat comes from a global production system that is already struggling to find enough arable land, adequate supplies of water, and drought-tolerant plants and animals to feed seven billion people. Add two billion more – of all income levels – and you have a recipe for a devastating raid on the natural world. Where is all this extra food and water going to come from, especially if the climate gets hotter and drier in many places as predicted?

Industry has an answer: more of the same. More chemicals, fertilizers, GMOs, monocropping, heavy fossil fuel use, and land ownership consolidation. A second ‘Green Revolution’ is required, they say, even though the consequences of the first one have been decidedly mixed, especially for the environment. Of course, Industry is more than happy to continue profiting from these ‘solutions’ – which is why they insist on keeping their hand on the steering wheel.

Fortunately, there is another way, as I was reminded while visiting Colin Seis’ farm inNew South Waleslast fall. Colin pioneered a regenerative agricultural practice called pasture cropping, and I went exploring to learn his story.

In 1979, after a wildfire burned nearly all of Colin Seis’ farm and sent him to the hospital with burns, Colin decided to rethink the way he had been practicing agriculture. His new goal was to rebuild the soil’s fertility after decades of practices had unwittingly depleted it. Colin and his family raise Merino sheep (for wool) on their farm, so Colin decided first to take up holistic management, which is a way of managing animals on pasture that mimics the graze-and-go behavior of wild herbivores. It’s perfectly suited for centralNew South Wales, whose rolling grasslands, decent rainfall, and lack of native predators and make it ideal for raising sheep – lots of sheep. But it is what Colin did next that really caught people’s attention.

After a late night of beer-drinking at the local pub with a friend, an idea struck Colin: what if he no-till drilled an annual crop into his perennial grass pastures? Meaning, could he raise two products from one piece of land: a grain crop and an animal product? This was a heretical idea. Crops and grazing animals were supposed to be kept separate, right? But that’s because the traditional practice on cropland is plowing, which eliminates the grasses. But what if you no-till (no plow) drilled oat or wheat or corn seed directly into the pasture when the grasses were dormant? Would they grow?

Colin decided to find out. Fast forward to the present – and the answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ Pasture cropping, as Colin dubbed it, works well and has spread across Australiato some 2000 farms. Today Colin produces grain and wool – and, if he wanted, a harvest of native grass seed, which was an original food source for the Aboriginals of the area. It’s all carefully integrated and managed under Colin’s stewardship.

Pasture cropping is just one example of regenerative practices that build topsoil, increase yields, and conserve the natural environment. There are many others, involving soil, seeds, water, plants, livestock, trees, organics, and people – as the stewards. Building topsoil, for instance, stores more water, grows healthier plants that can feed more people while sequestering carbon – which is good for nature too!

Is this pie-in-the-sky stuff? Perhaps, but consider the alternative: more of what got us into trouble in the first place. With two billion more people to feed, clothe, house, warm, and slake thirsts, contemplating alternatives is crucial if we’re going to have our natural world and eat it too.

Fortunately, answers exist, if we’re willing to go exploring.

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[Earlier postings can be found under the 'Columns' button at left]

Along the Frontier:

Musings and Reflections

The Mural